A longtime executive of BP, British Petroleum, is joining Virent Energy Systems, a Madison company working on alternative fuel technology.

Lee Edwards will become the company's president and chief executive on Jan. 2, succeeding Eric Apfelbach.

Edwards was with BP for 25 years, most recently as president and CEO of BP Solar, a global solar technology company with 2,200 employees and $1 billion in annual sales.

"Virent represents a unique opportunity in the biofuels industry: a differentiated catalytic technology that offers feedstock flexibility, lifecycle efficiency, and fuel products identical to petroleum fuels," Edwards said in a statement.

Virent's BioForming technology turns plant sugars into hydrocarbon molecules with identical structure to the petroleum-based hydrocarbons currently used in fuel.

Edwards has been appointed to Virent's board of directors.

In a separate action, the board has named Jay Kouba, CEO of Tetravitae Biosciences and chairman of Metabolix, two other biofuel-related companies, as its chairman.